


forever

by h1sss (m3owww)



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Spencer Reid-centric, sort of? i don't know what else to call this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-18
Updated: 2021-02-18
Packaged: 2021-03-14 04:35:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29536923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/m3owww/pseuds/h1sss
Summary: Every single failure weighs heavily on his shoulders.Every single corpse. Every crime scene photo he’s ever seen, every single person that they’d been too late, too slow, to save. They’re all burned into his mind, the images clear as day. And they’ll stay that way. Forever.
Kudos: 7





	forever

**Author's Note:**

> I went back to watching Criminal Minds and spontaneously wrote this because I watched that one episode in S4 with Adam/Amanda and combined with Reid's eidetic memory, my brain wouldn't shut up until I wrote it.
> 
> That being said, there might be some errors in this because I didn't really bother proofreading. It's also kind of short. Sorry about that.

Every single failure weighs heavily on his shoulders.

Every single corpse. Every crime scene photo he’s ever seen, every single person that they’d been too late, too slow, to save. They’re all burned into his mind, the images clear as day. And they’ll stay that way. Forever.

With every case, that darkness inside him, the monstrous shadows that churn and hiss and try to claw their way to the surface, that darkness grows stronger, and he feels the light fade just a little bit more.

He wakes up night after night with the smell of burning fish guts in his nostrils and a throbbing foot. He feels blood, warm and sticky on his hands, as he tries to stop a boy from bleeding to death. The images of so many victims, so many people, all torn and beaten and bloody and so, so _lifeless-_

Every morning, he scrubs his hands of the blood that hasn’t been there in a long time but will never wash off, either. He opens a window and inhales the outside air until fish guts no longer linger in his nose and the angel with a shotgun that lurks in a corner has disappeared. But the people? They never leave his mind. They’ll be there, always nagging at him, always reminding him of every time he hasn’t been enough, and they will stay there. Forever.

Even when they win, it still feels like a loss more often than not. Eighty-nine pairs of shoes. Twenty-one lost to anthrax. The ones that had been gone before the team even knew they had been in danger. The ones that had died, even as they tried their hardest to help.

He doesn’t know how many failures he has. He knows exactly how many he can see with perfect clarity (the number is so, so high), but the exact number of failures remains a mystery. Not everyone they catch will confess to every single crime, or every single body.

He doesn’t know how many there are for sure, but he does know that he’s failed.

And he will remember that. Forever.

Once, he remembers Adam asking how long it would take before he could close his eyes and not see them there, how long before the pictures go away.

He’d bitten his lip and told Adam that he didn’t know, but that wasn’t true. He _did_ know the answer, but telling him that it was unclear was better than telling him the truth.

Because, the truth was, he would never forget. Each and every memory was going to stay with him, clinging to his mind and whispering sinisterly in his ear. Forever.


End file.
